The Three Oaths force the WT to let the initiative of the conflict to the Seanchan, unless the WT finds allies that can strike before the AS lines get involved once in danger.

That's a massive disadvantage - their greatest - and only an alliance with a sizeable faction of Asha'man (Rand's/Logain's) can overcome this. Worst: in KOD, Mat has unwittingly revealed this weakness to Seanchan commanders.


Otherwise, unless Egwene or the Hall propose to temporarily abandon the oath against using the OP as weapon to deal with the Seanchan (which she appears having no intent to do... Bryne might bring it up soon, though, as short of a combined strike with the Asha'man it's about the only viable solution to surprise the Seanchan, at least with reasonable expected losses... having the WT armies on the frontline so the sisters can join in would be very costly in lives and be extremly stupid since that's pure moronic hypocrisy... in effect abandonning the third oath by attacking with the OP but losing lives just so the Oath remains in force.. not something I'd see Egwene condoning, she'd rather lift the Oath then), there won't be any planning for a strike to finish off the Seanchan and thus take advantage of the few assets the WT has over them, like circles and san'angreal. The WT will keep being forced to let the Seanchan come to them on their own terms, hoping the next time the AS will be more organized and readier to counter whatever the Seanchan throw at them. The Tower's non-channelling armies were useless against the Seanchan. They might win a few battles but would lose the war without channellers on the offensive, just like Ituralde did.

Right now, Egwene has no idea the Seanchan are mostly in Altara. She has no solid intelligence about their real military forces, no notion of how many damane they have (AS have lost most of their E&E in Seanchan territories). She'd be a complete moron to go on the offensive right now, and Bryne/Chubain wouldn't be worth their positions if they advocated an offensive at this juncture. She wouldn't even know where to strike, or how many strikes and where would be necessary to cripple the Seanchan... With Travelling most likely in the hands of the Seanchan (Egwene was damane, she knows the odds the prisoners will be able to resist the sul'dam for long...), she would have to leave enough behind to defend Tar Valon, and she can't be sure all her forces might not be required for that...


With the LB looming, a massive amount of BA escaped and the absence of any formal junction with the Dragon on whose shoulders the fate of the world and thus the WT rest at this time, I very much doubt Egwene will have any idea of going on the offensive, which isn't among her three top priorities. According to AS thinking (and this isn't on the whole wrong, just a tad exagerating the worth of the sisters), the world can't afford the sort of AS losses an offensive against the Seanchan would bring. The WT leaders will pray the Light Egwene bloodied the noses of the Seanchan enough they will delay another action for long enough that the LB will have started and the Shadow will keep them too occupied to strike at the AS. Rand's not the only one who will see the truth that this is a war the Light can't afford.

The Seanchan aren't so likely to strike again at the WT soon. They got new damane, and they'll get Travelling soon, but the raid wasn't as succesful as could be hoped, and they probably realized it's not because AS have been few and far between in all the nations they conquered that there isn't a whole lot of them at the WT. The fact is the AS were also able to strike back (while leashed ones can't be forced to make weapons with the Power.. a mystery that Mat and his AS solved for them in KOD by revealing in front of DWG officers that it's a matter of their lives being in danger... if the DWG didn't report this, they will after the raid when the response of the Tower during the battle will be carefully analyzed- and this has a major implication: if Tuon stays away from the Tower, the AS won't come on the offensive, because they can't - the Empress will now know how Hawkwing was really able to conquer the whole continent while the Tower did nothing, whyso few AS have opposed the Seanchan advance so far... The real threat to deal with, the real priority, is now the Asha'man and Rand, as those can and have attacked the Seanchan. It's not the AS the Seanchan will plan to attack next, it's the BT... Yulan's plan involved maps of two areas in KOD - Brandon seems to have cheated because of the book split so that the two strikes Yulan planned were not discussed at the same time. Jordan's original idea for Yulan's plan was most likely that in phase 1 the Seanchan hoped to steal Travelling and the "AS weapon" and use this to strike at the BT very soon after. Brandon probably chose to alter this a bit so the plans for the Asha'man were not brought up until TOM. Originally, the ending of TOM wasn't happening in AMOL a whole lot after the strike on the WT - 5-10 chapters after maybe? We'll see after TOM how many chapters cover the post-TGS timeline), and Egwene's stunt with the san'angreal will be a deterrent for a while at least - we don't even know if the Seanchan know what angreal/san'angreal are - or if they'll believe some rare AS dwarf the strength of the strongest damane - at least the Empress now has an idea of how much resources she'll have to commit to finish off the Tower, and that's a lot, perhaps the choice between committing most of her damane, many armies and halting the Return to strike at the WT - with the possibility her losses will be so high the rest of the campaign will be doomed (the Empress too is fully aware the LB is about to start...), or go on the way Hawkwing built his Empire, by securing all the nations before she isolates and assieges the Tower again (and with Travelling it will be near impossible... they will have to settle for destruction, or capture of all AS).